AC Transit has put off a 25 cent fare increase for the moment but likely will approve one soon.

Rapidly rising fuel and health care costs are forcing the district’s hand, directors and staff members told riders at a meeting Wednesday.

Directors spoke most favorably on the last of three options AC Transit will hear in May. That would raise the base fare to $2, raise normal monthly passes by the same percentage, eliminate the 25-cent transfer fee and keep rates for senior, youth and disabled passes unchanged.

Eric Carter, 14, was among the 75 people who came to the meeting to oppose bus fare increases.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” he told the agency’s seven directors. People like him, he said, wouldn’t be able to afford to ride the bus to school or work.

But what he didn’t tell the board was that in addition to riding the bus to school from his Berkeley homeless shelter, he uses his $15 monthly bus pass to sell window shades, toys and candy door-to-door.

Eric’s appeal and the pleas of several dozen other young riders helped cement the board’s resolve to preserve the seven-year-old youth pass reduction from $27 to $15.

Agency staff members, struggling to cope with a $5 million budget shortfall because of skyrocketing fuel and employee health care costs, had suggested returning to something closer to the old price as part of a package of increases.

But most board members criticized the proposal as they decided to hold public hearings May 24 on several fare increase ideas. The board ruled out triggering automatic fare increases linked to the cost of living.

“I really would have liked to have no fare increase at all,” said board member Greg Harper, who did a sophisticated analysis of how past fare increases have driven away riders and did not result in corresponding revenue increases.

But more than 40 percent increases in diesel fuel and health care costs will force the board’s hand, Harper said.

“Regardless of what passes, we’re going to be doing some major service cuts,” he said, lamenting that the agency was in danger of repeating a pattern of increasing fares right before a round of painful service cuts, imposing a double hardship on riders.